


Our Choices Seal Our Fate

by autobotscoutriella



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Character Death, Crisis of conscience, Ethical Issues, Gen, Pre-Canon, medics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 16:57:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21341608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autobotscoutriella/pseuds/autobotscoutriella
Summary: An Autobot medic comes to a horrifying realization about her role in the war.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: FandomWeekly (2019-2020) Writing Challenge on Dreamwidth





	Our Choices Seal Our Fate

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [FandomWeekly](https://fandomweekly.dreamwidth.org/268156.html) prompt "Moment of Truth".
> 
> Mind the tags - the violence in this one is more graphic than I usually write.

“Medic! We need a medic!”

Tucking away the welder, Echo shoved herself back to her feet and hauled her previous patient upright one-handed. He coughed and looked down at the dull silver metal welded where his thigh plating had once been. “You, uh...you sure this'll hold, Doc?”

“It'll get you back to triage. Go!” She caught him glancing toward the raging firefight and shoved him none-too-gently in the opposite direction. “You're out for the day. Go before I have to patch your other leg.”

Of course, she would eventually. Most of her patients showed up during and after every battle. Sometimes she had to declare them dead.

“Medic!”

Echo shook off that morbid line of thought and sprinted to the source of the increasingly frantic shouts, a mech so covered in metal fragments and dust that she couldn't identify anything other than his frametype. He was kneeling over a dark crumpled form, both shapes lit up by the arcing electricity flashing from the injured mech's chest.

If the electric pulses hadn't told Echo it was hopeless, the rapidly expanding pool of dark energon would have. The mech on the ground might still be alive, but he wouldn't stay that way for long.

She dropped to one knee beside them, barely glancing at the gaping, melted hole in the mech's chest before turning to his companion. “I got him. You need to get out of here.” As if to punctuate her statement, laser blasts whistled past overhead, crashing into both armies and triggering a brand-new round of screams and shouts. “Go! I'll take care of him.”

“He's gonna be okay, right? He'll be all right?”

Echo reflexively popped her shield up, covering all three of them from another round of blaster fire. For a few sparkbeats, she stared at the mech in front of her, knowing what she had to say.

_Never lie to the patient._

“I'm sorry.” Blue optics met orange for a second before Echo had to look away. “You need to go. I'll stay with him.”

The mech let out an anguished groan that was only half-stifled by the bloody hand he clamped over his mouth. “I can't—”

“_Go_!”

After another few sparkbeats, the mech shoved himself upright and stumbled away, EM field wide-open and burning with grief. Sparkmate, best friend, platonic or romantic partner? Echo didn't know and couldn't think about it.

The dying mech's fingers scraped weakly against her arm, a desperate search for contact. Echo grasped his hand firmly in her own and spoke as softly as she could while still being audible over the battle noises. “Just relax. I'm here. I'm here.”

He tried to speak. It came out as a hoarse gurgle, and energon trickled down his cheek.

“Don't talk. Just rest.”

He tried one more time, but it came out as nothing more than a wheeze. His optics flickered and went dark, and seconds later the faint glow from his exposed spark chamber faded to nothing.

Echo closed her optics for a second, murmured “The AllSpark will welcome you back” in a tone that sounded far more exhausted than she meant it to, and pushed herself upright, carefully disentangling her fingers from the dead mech's grip. As she rose, her gaze flicked across the half of the faction brand that remained on the mech's destroyed chest.

There wasn't much of it left, but it had once been purple and jaggedly pointed. He'd been a Decepticon. So had his partner.

Screams of pain and terror mingled with shouted orders and the smell of smoke and burning energon. Echo pulled her shield in close, as if it would keep away the sound and smell and taste of ash in her mouth, and scanned the battlefield for the next casualty in need of assistance.

She had never stopped in the middle of a battle and let herself _look_ before. There was a good reason for that.

The ground was littered with corpses, shot and stabbed and shredded and melted. The metal underfoot was soaked and stained a dozen different shades of blue, layers of energon that wouldn't wash out even with thousands of years' worth of rain. It was impossible to tell which faction the bodies had once belonged to—if it mattered, anymore.

Her tanks churned with sudden, sickening horror as she realized just how many mechs would never leave this battlefield.

She could patch up every mech on that field—and she would, because she was a medic and it was her job. They would go right back to their respective armies and be sent out to die on the next campaign, or the next, or the next.

That wasn't _saving_ them. _Saving_ them meant keeping them _alive_, and she hadn’t. How many mechs had she sent back onto the battlefield to die?

_What have I done?_

She found herself stumbling out toward the field, through laser fire and shouts and orders. If anyone was still alive out there, she would find them. No one else had to die on this field.

“Echo! Fall back!” The Autobot captain was shouting at her, making sharp gestures that she knew he expected her to obey. “Fall back! Prime's orders are to retreat!”

“There's still wounded out here.” It came out as hoarse and ragged as any one of the survivors she'd tried to help. “On both sides. I can't leave.”

“_Both_ sides?” He was at her side, reaching for her. “Let's go, Doc. The 'Cons can fend for themselves. Orders are—”

“_Fuck_ your orders!”

The words rang through the air before she had time to consciously choose them, and she realized that somewhere in her subconscious, she had made a decision that she hadn't known was up for debate.

_I'm done. I'm done with this war. I'm done sending mechs out to die._

The captain recoiled back. “Medic—”

“_No_.”

She wouldn't abandon anyone. Not today. Not like this.

She was done patching up mechs just to send them back to their deaths.

_No more._


End file.
